AROUND THE NEK - Yohvani Chase and Tiffany Schuman are both dropouts.  Chase left St. Johnsbury Academy and Schuman stopped going to Lyndon Institute.  "I was just nervous.  That's all I can really say about it.  I didn't really like school," said Schuman.

Both these former high school students are part of the Vermont Department of Education's annual dropout rate calculation.  High School dropout rates in this neck of the Northeast Kingdom are relatively low, but are in line or a little bit above Vermont's average.   Meg Powden, co-principal of the Danville School, said that these numbers are based on a cohort group from their freshman year so the graduation rate is based on those four years.  This means that over those four years a student in that cohort group can leave one school, transfer to another, and dropout.  That will count against both schools, increasing their rate.

Chuck Brown, principal of Oxbow High School, said, "Tracking data isn't good enough.  You have to know the kid's name that's attached to that data and there has to be personalized interventions."  Their philosophy seems to be working well, since their dropout rate has decreased significantly thanks to programs such as peer mentoring and faculty advising, and they are not stopping there.  "We're not thinking it's better, we're actually thinking it's not good enough," according to Brown.

Good enough is zero, a number St. Johnsbury Academy has had for many years.  Northeast Kingdom Learning Service Center Manager Deborah Leach said that when she tried to set up a dropout prevention program with St. Johnsbury Academy they told her simply, "We don't have a dropout problem, we expel."  When asked if this was the case, St. Johnsbury Academy told News 7, "No comment."

Yohvani Chase said, "They just kind of told me that I needed to go home or leave school.  I wasn't going to go home, so I left."  Chase dropped out, then reality hit.  "When it came to finding a job, a lot of employers told me that without the most basic anything they are not going to be able to help me, so education had this whole new meaning."  That's when Chase and Tiffany Schuman turned to Northeast Kingdom Learning Services.

"I get all kinds of statements, attitudes, behaviors, some of them, a lot of them are just fed up with school.  The list is long.  There's a lot of reasons why kids come through our doors," said NEKLS Center Manager Deborah Leach.  According to Chase, at NEKLS the atmosphere at NEKLS is better.  "It's kind of like talking to a friend than a teacher."

Leach said that when a student first comes through their doors, "We go over all the programs that we offer for them to receive secondary education credential or their GED."  Chase is in the process of completing his high school diploma and is set to graduate in June.